Siri has been around for ages. Apple keep plugging Siri as this really useful personal assistant, but in all the time Siri has been living in my iPhone, I have found exactly 1 use for her/it. In the morning, when my alarm goes off, if I shout Hey Siri! across the room, she will silence my alarm without me having to get out of bed. That is it. That is the one use that Siri has for me. I think Siri could be great. Siri could be the best assistant out there. But the fact of the matter is that Siri isn’t the best assistant out there, not by a long shot. The reason that Siri is so useless is because of Apple. It’s not that they haven’t developed Siri enough, it’s that they do that thing that Apple are famous for; walling her off in her own secret garden and never let her out to play . . . (that sounded creepy). To be perfectly honest, now that I think about it, they’re all like that. I’ve tried Google Now, and that isn’t very useful either, although that is partially because of Apple’s sandboxing among other things. I’ve also tried Evi, which doesn’t have an iPad version and doesn’t do landscape mode, not to mention it still suffers from the walled garden effect. And Assistant.ai, which is quite frankly, grating; I thought we were passed the days of those clearly synthesised voices – I know I can buy a nicer voice, but I shouldn’t have to – also, there’s a difference between using a personal pronoun to refer to a virtual assistant, and going full dolphin with the anthropomorphism. Assistant.ai does use Api.ai, though, which is a plus, I have wanted to put Api.ai into one of my own projects for a while now, but we’ll see. There is this new one, Hound, but it’s not available in the UK, so . . . that’s that then. Of course, all of them are stunted by Apple. Only Siri may be the default assistant, so it would be unfair to judge the competitors on their inability to be accessed without unlocking the device and loading the app manually. Damn you Apple! But the crux of the problem is this. All of the assistants are useless because they don’t let me make them better. By that, what I mean is, they don’t do what Workflow does. Workflow is an excellent iOS app that I use every single day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. If you’ve ever used Automater on the Mac, Workflow is basically that, but on your phone and iPad and Apple Watch. Let’s look at an example Workflow: This might look a little complicated, but it is actually one of my more basic workflows. By using the following URL scheme I can activate the Workflow. "workflow://run-workflow?name=Add%20Shopping" It will then present the user with a list of commonly needed items, the list right at the top; Bread, Milk, etc,. The list items that are selected are appended to an Evernote shopping list that is then synced with everyone’s iPhones and computers, so we all always know what things we need to buy. The makers of Workflow don’t presume to know what I want. They make a tool and then allow me to customise that tool to fit my needs. Why can’t I do that with Siri, or any of the other assistants for that matter? Whichever company comes up with Workflow for Siri first is, in my opinion, going to make a mint! They’ll make a mint because all of a sudden, Siri is actually useful. People will want to use Siri to get work done, rather than as a joke. And...

For the last few days I’ve been enjoying–perhaps ‘enjoying’ is the wrong word–revelling in a blast from the past, AppleScript. AppleScript occupies a special place in my heart, because AppleScript is the language that introduced me to programming. It seems I spend all my time programming in C and C++, and learning Swift these days, but alas I find all of those languages lacking when it comes to soft-automation. So it seems AppleScript has risen from the dead and reared its simplistic, yet surprisingly versatile head once again. (Plus, now that I have learned so much C, C++ and Swift, I’ve brought a much more formulaic style to my new AppleScript.) So, the premise. I have been asked to do some topological surveys, and then draw up those surveys using Illustrator. I, however, do not want to spend a hundred years learning Illustrator, nor do I want to spend a hundred years drawing up survey maps. I do, however, have a great interest in automation, and while I cannot currently automate the actual survey itself (although I have some ideas about that), I have managed to automate a good deal of the Illustrator work. And it’s taken me less than a week. . . there’s still a bit to do, mind you, but progress is progress and that’s an end of it! So, the problem. I had assumed that the main problem would be having to learn how to use Adobe’s “Actions”, which is Adobe’s version of OS X...

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5 – ALISS] [Download] Just FYI, ALISS v0.7.4 has changed so dramatically that a lot of what follows is no longer representative of how the programme operates. The basic structure is the same, but almost all of the variables have changed, among other things. That said, I have not yet finished testing 0.7.4, so this article will remain here as long as 0.7.3 is still available. I am also...

Having had to deal with a number of spontaneous pneumothoraces over the years, I have spent a good deal of time online looking for information about procedure and pain. There are many articles online that detail exactly what a pneumothorax is, who is prone to it, why it happens and, indeed, what can be done about it, but there is very little that actually explains, in clear, laymen’s terms, what happens during the procedure,...